Biography

Tessa Farmer is Associate Professor in the Global Studies Program and Anthropology Department at the University of Virginia. She serves as the Track Director for the Global Studies-Middle East South Asia (GSMS) program. Tessa received her MA (2007) and PhD (2014) in Anthropology from the University of Texas at Austin. She conducted fieldwork in Cairo, Egypt between 2009 and 2018. Based on this work, her current book project, “ Water at the Threshold: Production of Ambiguity through Infrastructure in Cairo,” investigates the ways in which lower income residents of Cairo work to obtain sources of potable water and deal with the ramifications of sewage in their urban ecology. Her research has been awarded funding by the Fulbright Hayes, the Social Science Research Council, the PEO, the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Virginia. Her work has appeared in Middle East Law and Governance, Review of Middle East Studies, Anthropological Quarterly, Text Practice and Performance, and she co-guest edited a special issue on the Environment in the Middle East in the International Journal of Middle East Studies.